Archive for November, 2007

iPhone Discoveries

Nov 07
24

Here are some tips tricks that I discovered about the iPhone that I didn’t know when I got the device. Some of these may be obvious some may be tricks you find useful. These are all things you can do without hacking your phone.

  1. Theres a little switch on the side above the volume buttons that puts the phone into vibrate mode. This seems like a duh’ now but I didn’t even notice this switch at first.
  2. When browsing a website if you scroll to the bottom of the page the address bar will go away. If you press your finger where the address bar used to be in the top 1/4 inch the page will scroll to the top. If you hit this accidentally it may seem like a bug but if you know it’s there it’s quite useful.
  3. When typing on the keyboard you can get certain special characters by holding down certain letters. For example hold down the A or E for accented A’s and E’s. This seems to be available for (E, Y, U, I, O, A, S, L, Z, C, N, ?, !)
  4. If you’re listening to music and lock the phone you can double click the home button and you’ll get basic controls for next song/previous song and volume even while the device is locked. Also the side buttons will control the volume when the device is locked.
  5. Mobile Safari has a ‘developer mode.’ Go into settings, safari and enable the developer mode. You’ll now get warnings and errors in safari as you visit pages. This is useful for debugging mobile web apps.
  6. If you’re browsing a site you can hold your finger down over a link to see the URL target.
  7. The phone will auto-recognize numbers that look like telephones and automatically link them to the phone function.
  8. You can use the ‘timer’ application to sleep your phone. If you’re listening to music and nodding off you can set the timer to turn off your iPod after a certain amount of time. Just change the “When the Timer Ends”option.
  9. If you have someone in your contact list that shows up in the ‘wrong’ place you can add a field to their contact info called ‘phonetic name’ so they will get sorted phonetically not by how their name is spelled. For example I have a bunch of restaurant under ‘food.’
  10. If your phone rings and you’re listening to music squeeze the headphone clicker once to answer and again to end the call.
  11. In the stock and weather app if you select the little Y! in the corner it’ll take you to the Yahoo page on that stock or city.
  12. You can get your AT&T monthly balance and remaining minutes texted to your phone. Go to settings, phone, AT&T Services and select either balance or view my minutes.

Eink and Amazon Kindle

Nov 07
21

Amazon Kindle

Amazon recently introduced a ‘new’ device for reading books called Kindle. The idea is that you would carry this new device around and enjoy reading your books, blogs and newspapers on the go.  What struck me was that I’ve already been using a device like this for years. It’s called a laptop. The Kindle product does introduce two very itneresting technologies that have yet to make it to mainstream:

  1. Go anywhere, no-subscription wireless via an EVDO built in connection (Dubbed ‘whispernet’ by Amazon)
  2. Electronic ink that allows you to view the screen in bright sunlight with no backlight

While these new technologies are amazing the lack of a web-browser, word processor, email, 802.11 and a million other things will mean that you’ll likely need to carry this around in supliment to your laptop and cellphone. The lack of a full cataloug of books means that if a particular best seller doesn’t play ball you’ll need to get the hardcover anyway.

Behold the dancing bear. It’s not amazing because the bear dances particularly well but that it dances at all. If you could marry this device with the millions of books scanned by the folks at Google Books then you would really start to have something.

The great diamond hunt of 2007

Nov 07
13

This last weekend I was running around Boston searching for a diamond. The 2007 E.B. Horn Diamond hunt sent 200 teams running through the streets of boston on an adventure fit for Dan Brown. Each team was given seven clues. The first 10 teams to solve five of these riddles would have a good shot at winning a 25k diamond.

The event was a lot of fun and I’m glad I had the opportunity to participate. I didn’t win and I must say I underestimated the difficulty of the clues. We were only able to solve two of the clues in the allotted time though we did manage to visit a lot of locations.

I’m hoping perhaps my readers can help me figure out the answers and decipher some of the other clues…

iflickr Great Diamond Hunt - Clue #2 - 2007 Great Diamond Hunt - Clue #3 - 2007 Great Diamond Hunt - Clue #4 - 2007 Great Diamond Hunt - Clue #5 - 2007 Great Diamond Hunt - Clue #6 - 2007 Great Diamond Hunt - Clue #7 - 2007

World Usability Day 2007

Nov 07
8

Today is World Usability Day so take a minute and think about how the products and services around you could be more usable and friendly. Think about the frustrations you experience and the frustration experienced by others. Each year world usability day aims to raise awareness about usability in the hope that products and services will strive to be more usable, not just more functional.

There are events going on around the world today, see what’s going on in your city.

New Raizlabs Project

Nov 07
4

Emily Raiz

Emily was born November 2nd 2007 making me a proud father. She will undoubtedly change my perception of the world and everything in it. We tend to view the world through our own eyes and with our own history. Only when that perspective changes can we begin to see the world all new again and full of possibilities. Have a great weekend everyone!